The Role of the Communication Discipline to Tackle COVID-19: Interrogating Positive Deviations and Critical Discourses

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic descended on us in an unexpected, uncontrollable, and unpredictable manner, disrupting the world order and affecting all sectors of human society. The world had little time to prepare for the ravages of a novel and highly infectious coronavirus. By February 2021, some 112 million people had contracted COVID-19 globally, and 2.5 million had died. Even with the availability of vaccines at warp speed, and vaccination efforts rolling out in early 2021, it is still uncertain how the pandemic-with all its highly infectious mutant variants-would play out. No one knows with any certainty what the endpoint will be, and what lies ahead.Since the spread of the COVID-19 was uncontrollable from the beginning, and little was known about the novel virus, the pandemic response has varied greatly at the global, national, and regional levels. Remarkably, several scientifically advanced countries had dismal pandemic responses, notably the USA and the UK. The U.S. arguably had the worst response, accounting for 25% (28 million) of the global COVID-19 cases, and 20% (500,000) of the deaths. In contrast, several developing countries of Asia and Africa have done a remarkable job of controlling COVID-19 with scant resources. For instance, to date, Bhutan has recorded only one death among its population, and Vietnam, Rwanda, and Senegal have, respectively, recorded 35, 226, and 700 deaths (Drexler, 2021).While the reasons for pandemic success vary from country-to-country, the key reasons for success centre around various communicative functions-the exercise of political will through the setting of media and public agendas (Dearing & Rogers, 1996), attentive and compassionate leadership with safety nets for the most vulnerable (Singhal & Rogers, 2003), clear cut publichealth guidance (Kim et al., 2014), early and relentless contact-tracing of people's social networks, and a shared understanding of the value of preventive practices such as quarantining, social distancing, masking, and hand hygiene (Kim, 2020;Kim & Kreps, 2020).Unlike the disastrous leadership of Donald Trump in the USA, in Bhutan, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck set the policy, media, and public agenda for COVID-19 right off the bat by telling government officials that even one death was too many, that detailed plans be made,

Coercive Communication: Compliance with Government Policies to Reduce COVID-19 Spread in Indonesia

“…Figure 1 shows that public compliance can be influenced directly and indirectly by coercive communication (Cr) through information seeking (Si) and public attitude (Pa). Based on this research framework, direct and indirect effects is evidence in line with previous literature that coercive communication (Mani & Guntoro, 2020; Sager, 2009), information seeking (Singhal & Kim, 2021) and public attitude affect compliance (Alabede et al, 2011).…”

“…Information seeking is a result of pressure or coercion of certain parties and is called coercive communication. Thus, information seeking, attitude changes and compliance can be influenced by persuasive communication (Al-Marshoudi et al, 2021; Perloff, 2003; Singhal & Kim, 2021) and coercive communication (Mani, 2017).…”

“…To date, literature on communication and COVID-19 has increasingly been published. The perspectives of communication science regarding these issues include the phenomenology studies on social media (Brindha et al, 2020), the role of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic (Hussain, 2020), effective communication as COVID-19 cure (Dhoot, 2020; Singhal & Kim, 2021), social media and public opinion (Han et al, 2020), risk communication (Lim & Nakazato, 2020) and other articles that focus on COVID-19 from diverse disciplines and using various approaches. However, only a few studies have investigated the role of information sources, coercive communication, knowledge and attitude to obey COVID-19 policies and raise awareness of COVID-19.…”

Transformation of the Colombian Radio in the Informative Sonosphere of the SARS-CoV-2

“…The transfer of information, from one place to another, occurs through various multitasking and multiplatform channels; informative sonosphere that intermingles a series of variables that delineate a complex communication industry (Aleixandre-Benavent et al, 2020), journalistic flow that is entangled because it imposes rhythms and creation and distribution schemes that are very distant from the traditional models of action of the radio medium: productive routines to publish news on web pages, social networks, push notifications or narrative formats that do not exempt the continued taking care of the intrinsic value of authenticity, the demands of objectivity, independence and clarity inherent to the exercise of communicating (Singhal & Kim, 2021). The connection of the radio with the information agenda of the nation dates from the origin of the industry and its social function of satisfying the need to know more about the other (Barrios-Rubio, 2020), construction of reality linked to the collective imagination and legitimation culture in mediation that impacts the masses (Barrios-Rubio & Pedrero-Esteban, 2021).…”

COVID-19 and Mass Media Education: An Evaluation of the Transition from Brick-and-Mortar Learning to Virtual Space

“…To Eggert (2019, p. 37), blended learning enables learners to assemble physically and virtually to enjoy both training models and more significantly, emphasises how e-learning can impact journalism training in developing countries. Amid these challenges, COVID-19 broke out which Singhal and Kim (2021, p. 135) describes as follows: ‘descending on us in an unexpected, uncontrollable and unpredictable manner, disrupting the world order and affecting all sectors of human society.’ Considering its contagion, ineffective vaccination and high deaths, COVID-19 protocols discouraged physical contact and mass assembly of people. As a result, education was badly affected (AIT, 2020; Mohamedbhai, 2020) considering its human-interaction centeredness and more specifically journalism education (Mpofu, 2020).…”